Most hotels open with a ribbon cutting and a rush of first guests. The Beach Club, Barbuda is opening with two tents. Starting in late December 2026, you can book one of just two luxury beachfront tented suites on Princess Diana Beach, nearly a year before the resort behind them, Nobu Beach Inn, officially opens in late 2027. I have not stayed there, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. This is a news feature about a very small window, not a review. But if your idea of a winter escape is an empty pink sand beach with a Nobu chef a few steps away, this window is worth knowing about.
Two tents on two miles of beach
The setting does most of the selling. The Beach Club sits on nearly 400 protected acres on Barbuda’s southwest coast, with two miles of shoreline on Princess Diana Beach, a stretch once treasured as a private hideaway by Princess Diana. Barbuda is the quiet sibling in the Antigua and Barbuda pair, and that is the point. There is no resort strip here, no cruise crowd, just pink sand, turquoise water, and a frigate bird sanctuary nearby. I have covered Antigua’s quiet luxury side before, at The Inn at English Harbour, and Barbuda takes that same hush a step further.
The two suites were designed by Luxury Frontiers, the safari and eco-resort specialists, and they are built to suite standard rather than camp standard. Each is air-conditioned, with a king bed, a freestanding soaking tub, an open-air outdoor shower, and a shaded private terrace facing the water, plus indoor and outdoor living space. A dedicated Nobu team looks after guests, and days are tailored on request: breakfast on your private veranda, a morning massage on the terrace, a kayak or paddleboard run to a secluded sandbar, a boat charter to snorkel the offshore barrier reefs. Book both tents together and the beach is effectively yours for up to four guests. It is the same small-footprint, big-privacy logic that made Kanu Private Island in Belize stand out to me, only here the kitchen is Nobu. Parade’s report on the preview is what first put it on my radar.
What $3,500 a night gets you, and what it does not
Rates start at $3,500 per night, plus tax. That covers daily breakfast, beach barbecue dinners, and non-motorized watersports, with the Nobu team planning each day. Dining comes from Nobu Barbuda, the Caribbean’s only Nobu, which has operated on Princess Diana Beach since 2020. Expect beachfront barbecues built around the day’s local catch, and private omakase tastings prepared by the executive chef on request.
Two things to know before you price it out. Transfers to and from Barbuda are not included, so the hop from Antigua, by helicopter or boat, sits on top of the rate. And the omakase experience is the kind of curated extra worth confirming as included or extra before you book. One more detail sold me on the romance of it: the property sits under Class 2 Bortle dark skies, which puts its stargazing up there with the most remote deserts on earth. On a beach with almost nobody else on it, that is not a small thing.
A 30-year project with a famous name on it
This is Robert De Niro’s project in a way most celebrity hotels are not. He co-founded Nobu, and The Beach Club is the only Nobu resort property he personally owns. He first came to Barbuda more than 30 years ago on a boat trip from Antigua, and he has pursued this site ever since, alongside partners James Packer and Daniel Shamoon. The official site tells the same story: a quiet moment on Barbuda more than 30 years ago became a vision for a nature-first community shaped by the island’s rare beauty.
The site itself has history. It was once home to the K-Club, and the land was treasured as a private hideaway by Princess Diana. That past matters because it explains the shape of the project: low density, spread across hundreds of acres, with the beach left largely as it was. When the full resort arrives, it will still be just 36 rooms.
What arrives in late 2027
Nobu Beach Inn, the main event, is slated for late 2027 with 36 bedrooms across 17 single-story villas, plus a beach club, an oceanfront pool, an indoor and outdoor spa, a kids club, an outdoor cinema, tennis and padel courts, a gym pavilion, and a full watersports program. Restaurants will include an oceanfront grill and an omakase sushi bar, with visiting chefs, wellness practitioners, and cultural programming on rotation. Residences start from $12 million, if you want the longer version of the story.
Getting there is part of the adventure. Burton-Nibbs International Airport on Barbuda opened in October 2024 for private jets, about ten minutes from the property. Most travelers will come through V.C. Bird International Airport in Antigua, roughly three hours from Miami and four from New York, then hop across by helicopter in about ten minutes. It joins a small club of Caribbean openings I have tracked, including the Four Seasons Resort and Residences Anguilla, where the pitch was also seclusion first, scale second.
The honest read
So who is this for? Travelers who want Barbuda before Barbuda has a hotel of this kind at all, and who are happy to trade a finished resort for a finished beach. It is not for anyone who wants a spa, a pool scene, or a choice of restaurants on night one. Those arrive with the Inn in late 2027. And I will say it plainly again: I have not slept in one of these tents, so treat this as your heads-up, not my verdict. If the idea grabs you, the window is small by design. Two tents, a limited number of stays, and a year until the main resort opens.
